SOURCE - PRACTICAL VISIONARIES • By Liza Burkin Erica Walker (MSc ’11) is the founder of Noise and the City, an organization with a mission of providing community residents with accessible and relevant noise advocacy tools. She recently released NoiseScore, a free smartphone application that allows community members to objectively and subjectively describe community noise issues and map...

Source by Julia Maruca The streets of Boston are constantly filled with sound — people talking, cars honking, ambulances blaring — forming the general ambience of the city. On an ordinary day, Bostonians don’t pay attention to these sounds, but a new app seeks to bring the constant noise presence into the spotlight. Harvard University graduate...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BOSTON, MA – October 1, 2017 Erica Walker, recent graduate from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and founder of Noise and the City, announces the launch of au·ral, an open access research journal focusing on publishing innovative strategies for dealing with community noise issues. Noise and the City is...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BOSTON, MA – October 1, 2017 Erica Walker, recent graduate from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and founder of Noise and the City, announces the launch of NoiseScore, a free smart-phone application designed to record the objective and subjective responses to community noise and map user response in real-time....

Image Credit Julio Cesar Roman It has been a whirlwind here at Noise in the City. My father passed away just before Christmas last year and I had to somehow muster the energy to grieve, defend, and graduate. These past six months have been a test in resilience and determination. I finished up my doctorate...

A minority in many ways, Erica Walker is determined to find how urban noise affects human health Erica Walker is the only person who studies urban noise at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. [Image Credit: Julio César Román] Source: Scienline By Cici Zhang There are no truly quiet nights in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The...

LISTEN NOW Our American suburban tradition of watering lawns arose in the 1950s. (Photo: Ninian Reid/Flickr) Source: by Stephen J. Dubner I Produced by Christopher Werth Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “How Stupid Is Our Obsession With Lawns?” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.) Nearly two...

SOURCE THE HUFFTINGTON POST BY Carrie Sturrock, Contributor Most people don’t know when permanent hearing damage is occurring. So they listen to loud concerts. Or sit in booming movie theaters. Or pressure wash their driveways without wearing hearing protection. They don’t give much thought to the ringing in their ears or their temporarily muffled hearing. But those…

SOURCE By Beth Treffeisen Construction sites, planes flying over head, cars honking, loud music blasting, all contribute to the soundscape that make up Boston and in turn affect the residents who live and work in the city. Erica Walker, a doctoral student at Harvard T.H. Chin School of Public Health, has set out to measure…